Wandering+the+World

=  Ken Callaway= kenivy@hotmail.com || == ||
 * = =Wandering the World =


 * = Learners and Context ||= Competing Products ||= Object of Game ||= Content Analysis ||= Game Materials ||= Time Required ||= Game Rules ||= Design Process ||= References ||= [|Play Pieces] ||= [|Game Board] ||= [|Sample Questions] ||

**Instructional Objective**
The primary purpose of Wandering the World is to instill in the students an awareness of the world in a spatial sense. As there are no state standards for ninth grade geography, the Sweetwater district has created their own and in doing so has downgraded the importance of location. This, I feel, is a mistake. Without knowing location, learners do not have the required context necessary for understanding climatological, cultural, and ecological structures and processes. As Standard Four of the National Geography Standards explains, “When we understand where a place is located, we may begin to associate physical and human characteristics with that location. What is it like there?” Without this foundation, there is no solid ground to build on. By having the students exploring the world map, they will have a better idea of the location of different places, which will provide them with a context in which to information about the culture and physical aspects of the world.

The game will also touch on other geographic aspects such as landforms, vegetation, climate, various cultures around the world. In doing so, it will explore three of the district standards:
 * Standard 2. Identify and locate a region’s major physical features and political features and analyze the effects of these features; locate and identify the major climate regions and vegetation, and analyze their effects on the population.
 * Standard 3: Describe a region’s beliefs and lifestyles; analyze the effects of historical and present day movement of people, and ideas within and upon a region’s population.
 * Standard 4: Describe the major modern day industries and economic challenges; analyze and evaluate the effects of human interaction on the environment.

**Learners and Context of Use**
This game is designed for ninth grade students who don’t have a strong background in social studies in general and geography in particular. Many of them have spent the last few years of their educational lives with the focus being on learning English and mathematics, as these are the two subjects required at the heart of No Child Left Behind. As a consequence, many students are falling further behind in subjects not considered to be “core”. The game could be used for other high school grade levels, and even some middle school students, depending on the background the students have had in geography curriculum.

The setting for game play is assumed to be the classroom, and would be best in a setting that also students to move their desks into small groups. This would facilitate teamwork during the game. Prior to the game, there would have to be instruction given about each of the regions and after the game, it would be appropriate to have an assessment concerning what had been learned. However, the game could also be used as a pretest to assess the knowledge of the students in a fun, non-threatening fashion.

Playability of the game would be limited in its “out of the box” form. With only twenty cards per region, the students would quickly memorize the included information (which is not a bad thing.) For repeat game play, the teacher and students would need to create their own cards so that the information contained in the game is constantly expanding. Ideally, over time, the number of cards would enter the thousands.

**Competing Products**
There are a number of geographic games and puzzles, but most focus on a particular nation or region of the world, particularly the United States. This game seeks to deal with geography in a world wide sense, and those games are few and far between. There is, of course, Geosafari, and in no sense can Wandering the World be considered superior to it. The electronically based Geosafari offers much more content and flexibility than any board game is capable of matching. There are also games, such as World Treasure Hunt, that offer huge maps for the students to explore, much as Wandering the World does, but the content is invariably extremely limited and are aimed at much younger children.

The game must similar to Wandering the World is Passport to Culture. This game offers a tremendous amount of content about today’s world, much more than Wandering the World provides. However, the latter offers some compelling advantages. First, the map of the world is much larger and more detailed. Second, the content is easily expandable and adaptable. Third, and most important from a teacher’s perspective, is that Wandering the World’s content is built on the well-respected Glencoe World Geography text book and is directed at use in the classroom.

**Object of Game**
The object is to take control of a much of the earth’s surface as possible. This is accomplished by moving around the board on preset paths while answering geographically based questions. You must first gain control over the cultural region that your team started in, but once you do you can then spread your domination into uncontrolled areas or attack areas controlled by another team.

The game can also be used as a simple review of a particular cultural region. In that case, all teams stay in one region and compete for the most points by correctly answering the questions asked.

**Content Analysis**
Board Game Content Analysis template

**Game Materials**
The materials included with the game Wandering the World include: • 1 large [|game board], showing the a political map of the world and paths which guide the movement of the players • 10 [|Team Markers] (each marker represents a mode of travel, a large variety of markers are available for purchase at our website, [|www.wanderingtheworldoncredit.com]) • 200 [|Question Cards] (twenty for each of the ten cultural regions represented on the game board) • 100 blank Questions Cards (for teacher/student created questions; to purchase more card stock for creating even more cards, please visit the website listed above. Do not attempt to place questions on standard paper, as this would hurt our company's profit margin. With today's economy, it is vital to support small businesses such as ours.) • 100 [|Control Coins] (ten for each team marker) • 1 six-sided die

**Time Required**
The time required for the full version of the game is open-ended. As teams attempt to expand their control of the world, they will run into conflict with other teams. The conflicts may be resolved quickly or they may not, depending on the knowledge available to each of the teams. It will be difficult to take over the requisite three regions if the teams are evenly matched; the challenge is in the attempt. To work around this uncertainty, a time limit can be set beforehand and when that is reached, the winner is the team that has the most Control Coins on the board.

In playing the game as a review, the game can easily be completed in a one-hour period. The suggestion from the maker of the game, however, is that if the game is being used for review, the instructor should have some Question Cards made up that are specifically aimed at information the teacher intends to assess.

Beginning the Game
1) Each team (up to ten) begins the game by placing their Team marker at the starting point of one of the world’s cultural regions. (Teams or teachers can choose beginning regions.) 2) When this is done, each team rolls the die. Highest number goes first, with game play proceeding in numerical fashion based on the number of each cultural region. 3) Each teams first goal is to gain control over their region. To do this, they roll the die and proceed in any direction they choose around their region’s path. The goal is to land on one of the “?” squares, earning them the right to respond to a question from the moderator. Each question correctly answered allows them to put down one Control Coin on the number representing that region. An incorrect answer means a Control Coin must be removed. 4) It takes three Control Coins to take control of their region. Once this is accomplished, they can begin to expand to other regions.

Expanding Control
1) To expand into other regions, a team must use the die to leave their circle along one of the paths on the board and move into the circle of a neighboring region. Once in the circle, they must move until they land on one of the “?” squares. 2) Once they land on a “?” square, they are given a question concerning the region they invaded. If the team answers the question correctly, one of the opposing teams Control Coins is removed. The defending team, on their turn, has the opportunity to respond by answering a question. If they are correct, the Control Coin is put back. If no Control Coins are present, the attacking team gets to put down one of their own Control Coins. 3) If a team loses control of their region, they lose a turn. 4) Once a team has control of a new region, they must try keep at least one Control Coin on the number representing that region. The team that has lost control must use each of their turns trying to dislodge the invading team and regain control. If the defenders can place three Control Coins on their region’s number, the attacker must leave the area, going to attack another region or returning to their own. On the other hand, if the attacker succeeds in placing their three Control Coins on the region’s number, then the defending team has been knocked out of the game.

Ending the Game
The game ends when any team successfully knocks two other teams out of their regions.

Game Construction
The first thought that flashed through my head when told about this project was “how in the heck am I going to get this done?” These were also the second, third, and fourth thoughts I had. Getting from the idea (any idea) to a prototype seemed daunting. Then I recalled a game I had purchased years ago for my son from Mindware that included a huge map of the world as the game board. (Mindware no longer has the product.) I thought that a game revolving around such a board might be helpful for my geography students.

Once I had the basic idea of using a world map, things started to flow somewhat more smoothly. I decided to make it a game revolving around the learning of facts and concepts important to geography. This lent itself to the use of cards as a way to impart the necessary content. The use of cards would also allow for the content of the game to grow over time in a way that was both convenient and inexpensive. Strategy in the game setting would be of secondary import, though probabilities and context would affect the outcome. There seemed no reason to include vantage point in the game at all, considering what the content would be focused on.

The first step was creating the board and game piece. The board itself was a time-consuming task involving hours working with a vector-based program purchased for the process called Lineform. Since I was learning while doing, it took much more time than it otherwise would have. The Colonizing Coins were made using Lineform. The Team Markers, which are all different modes of transportation, were created with Carrera 3D Basics. The cards containing the questions and answers for the United States and Canada region were created using Microsoft Word.

Creating a full-size, playable prototype of this game would be problematic. Printing the game board out would be difficult on a standard printer. It would be necessary to go to a print shop to have it printed at any meaningful size. Since the background map is resolution dependent, even this would not create a map with the required detail. The entire game board would have to be redone. The Team Markers and Colonizing Coins, however, could easily be replaced with objects in the real world. (The coins could be pennies with number marked on them, for example.)

Once the basic design of the game board was completed, and the general rules were established, I played the game with my son, a tenth grade student at Steele Canyon High. We didn't make a board at this time; rather we used the computer monitor and some printed pages to take an overall look at the playability. He helped me redesign the rules somewhat. For example, he suggested teams should be able to move in whatever direction they wished in the circles, thus increasing the likelihood of landing on a question mark. He also suggested that I recreate the game board to make the paths less structured; more free-form. After all the hours I had spent struggling to make the board originally, this suggestion was quickly discounted.

Game Testing
At this point, I made a small version of the game board (printed on four sheets of paper and taped together is a not-altogether professional manner) and played the game with four of my ninth grade students using pennies for Control Coins and pieces from a Monopoly game for markers. I was able to print cards for the US-Canada region, but as the other sets of cards were not created, I simply asked the players review questions on each region whenever they landed on a question mark, rather than having the players draw a card. By doing this, I was able to get a feel for how game play would progress in my classroom.

The students who "volunteered" to be the play testers had fun with the game, and had no difficulty following the rules. There were some complaints about the fairness of the questions, with two players stating that the questions for gaining control over their territory were of a higher difficulty than those for the other regions. There was also frustration with trying to maintain control of the region once they had conquered it. The players felt that the attacking teams should be required to answer two questions consecutively to remove one of the Control Coins. This is something that could be looked at before moving into final production. Despite these comments, the students said they had a good time playing it, and would like to try it out as a class. As we discussed doing this, however, it became apparent that making the board big enough to play it with a full class would take a great deal of space, much more than our room configuration would allow. We also saw difficulties in trying to have everyone playing at one time; the consensus was that there would be too much time between turns. This problem was also foreseen by the Master of the Game, Bernie Dodge, who suggested some way to keep everyone involved to a greater extent. The possibility of having all teams have a chance at answering each question was discussed, but it was felt to be an unwieldy situation requiring some type of buzzer system to decide who had the chance to respond. At this time, the most workable solution arrived at was to have some of the students playing //Wandering the World// while others participated in another activity. After a set time period, the two groups would be switched. This would allow some flexibility in using the game; on the other hand, it would also require more class management skills by the instructor.

Almost a week after play-testing with my students, I called the students back in for lunch and went over Compton's game evaluation rubric. I gave each of them a printed copy of rubric and asked them to rate each characteristic and circle the number they felt was most appropriate. I assured them that I had no emotional investment in the outcome, but I'm sure at least a couple of the students boosted their scores a bit.The results are shown below.

In talking with them afterwards, all of the students felt they would have given the game lower scores in both flow and length if they were playing the game with a full class. There would be too much time between turns, and the play would drag on too long if there were more than four or five teams. On the other hand, they felt the fun level would have increased with the interaction within and between teams. As Pedro said, "How much fun can a game about geography be, anyway?"
 * <  ||= Lashay ||= Elmer ||= Pedro ||= Alexa ||
 * < Clarity ||= 5 ||= 7 ||= 5 ||= 5 ||
 * < Flow ||= 6 ||= 6 ||= 5 ||= 6 ||
 * < Balance ||= 5 ||= 7 ||= 4 ||= 7 ||
 * < Length ||= 7 ||= 7 ||= 7 ||= 6 ||
 * < Integration ||= 6 ||= 7 ||= 5 ||= 5 ||
 * < Fun ||= 5 ||= 5 ||= 3 ||= 4 ||

Books
Boehm, Richard (2005). World Geography. Columbus, Ohio: Glencoe/McGraw-Hill.

Websites
(April 2007). Political World Map 2007. Retrieved October 3, 2008, from World Map Web site: http://www.world-map.nl/

Dodge, Bernie (October 2008). Board Game Design Process. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from EdTech 670 Exploratory Learning through Simulation and Games Web site: http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec670/

Nicholson, Scott (September 28, 2008). Board Games with Scott. Retrieved October 2, 2008, from Board Games with Scott Web site: http://www.boardgameswithscott.com/